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Kaylie Murphy and Avon field hockey team to receive Spirit of Sport Award

by
Collinsville Press
April 15, 2026

Avon High senior Kaylie Murphy (20) gets high fives from her teammates before the Senior Day game against Suffield in October in Avon. (Image courtesy CIAC)

Courtesy CIAC
Cam Soucy, a senior captain on the boys soccer team at Tolland High and the Avon Field Hockey will be honored with the Michael Savage Spirit of Sport award at the CIAC’s Scholar Athlete Banquet on Sunday, May 3.

The Spirit of Sport award recognizes individuals who exemplify the ideals of the positive spirit of sport that represent the core mission of education-based athletics. This is the first time that multiple honorees will be recognized in the same year.

Over the past four seasons, Avon’s field hockey program set an example for inclusion, kindness and opportunity. Last fall, senior Kaylie Murphy completed her fourth and final season as a player in the program — a particularly notable accomplishment because Kaylie has autism.

Kaylie joined the field hockey team in the fall of 2022 and almost immediately began to leave an impression. Her story gained attention that fall when, through kind collaboration with Avon opponent East Catholic High School, Kaylie scored a goal late in a game.

That was just the beginning. Kaylie’s dedication to the program, she often has her mother practice with her on team off days, is a testament to the power of inclusion, friendship and what it means to have teammates.

Kaylie, who was named one of the team’s captains this fall, and the Falcons have set an example for the rest of us to live up to.

Kaylie’s mother Michelle says that the viral video of the goal vs. East Catholic led to a level of celebrity for her daughter.

“Three years later people still see it. We were traveling (flying out at the airport) and they were like ‘Is that Kaylie Muprhy? She’s the field hockey player from Avon!”

Longtime Avon field hockey head coach Terri Ziemnicki notes what a difference Kaylie’s inclusion in the program has made.

“I think back if she had never played field hockey, what would have been the opportunity where it just clicked? It’s magical,” she said.

Kaylie now has “40 sisters” on the team, and Avon field hockey sent a message across Connecticut, and beyond, that inclusion can be a hallmark for measuring impact and success in education-based high school athletics.

Last fall, Cam and his Tolland High teammates won a second straight CIAC Class M championship. Cam is a pediatric cancer survivor and inspiration to those who know his story.

In 2013, just before his fifth birthday, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 neuroblastoma with metastasis. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the nervous system. Cam’s tumor was on his adrenal gland and at time of diagnosis the cancer had metastasized throughout his body. The prognosis was bleak.

Cam’s mother Jessica Soucy shares that on a neuroblastoma rating scale of zero to 30, “Zero indicating being cancer free and 30 being end of life care, Camden was a 28 at diagnosis,” she said.

Receiving treatment in both Hartford and Boston, Soucy had surgery to remove the tumor, underwent chemotherapy, antibody therapy, and radiation therapy, underwent a bone marrow transplant and needed two years of a maintenance drug to keep him cancer free.

Tolland head coach Michael Caccomo said, “To be able to look at Cam and call him our captain, and call him our leader, and to call him a state champion, I think it means the world.”